The next critical period in the history of Germany is that of Frederick the Great, marked by the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the establishment of Prussia as one of the great Powers of Europe.
Here again we find a prince of Anhalt as one of the principal actors. The instrument with which Frederick the Great won his victories was his well-drilled army, and the drill-master of that army had been Leopold, Fürst zu Anhalt, the Field-Marshal of Frederick’s father. At the head of his grenadiers and by the side of Prince Eugène, Prince Leopold of Dessau had won, or helped to win, the great battles of Höchstadt, Blindheim (corrupted to Blenheim), Turin, and Malplaquet in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had thus helped in establishing against the overweening ambition of Louis XIV. what was then called the political equilibrium of Europe. The Prussian Field-Marshal was known at the time all over Germany as the “Alte Dessauer,” and through Carlyle’s “Life of Frederick the Great” his memory has lately been revived in England also. Having completely reorganised the Prussian army and having led it ever so many times to brilliant victories, he was for Prussia in his time what Bismarck was in our own. But after the death of Frederick I. and Frederick William II., Frederick II., or the Great, disliked the old general’s tutelage and dismissed him: much as Bismarck has been dismissed in our own time. The young King wrote to the old Field-Marshal quite openly: “I shall not be such a fool as to neglect my most experienced officers, but this campaign (in Silesia) I reserve for myself lest the world should think that the Prussian King cannot go to war without his tutor.” His old tutor was very angry, but he did not rebel, and in a State like Prussia, Frederick the Great was probably as right as the present Emperor in saying “Let one be King.” However, after Frederick had once established his own position as a general, he recalled his old tutor, and in the second Silesian War it was the brave warrior who stormed the heights of Kesselsdorf at the head of his old grenadiers, and won one of the most difficult and most decisive victories for his King. The King after the battle took off his hat before his tutor and embraced him in the sight of the whole army. The inscription placed on the Field-Marshal’s monument at Berlin, probably composed by the King himself, is simple and true: “He led the Prussian auxiliary forces victoriously to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po; he took Stralsund and the island of Rügen. The battle of Kesselsdorf crowned his military career. The Prussian army owes him its strict discipline and the improvement of its infantry.” The successors of Frederick the Great have never forgotten what they owe to the “Alte Dessauer,” and I doubt not they may be counted on in the future also as the stoutest friends and supporters of the illustrious house of Albrecht the Bear, the first Markgrave of Brandenburg.
If stronger testimony to the military genius of the Old Dessauer were wanted from the mouth of his own contemporaries, it might easily be quoted from the despatches of Prince Eugène. That great general freely admits that the Prince’s troops surpassed his own in courage and discipline; nay, he adds, “the Prince of Dessau has done wonders in the battle of Turin.” The Emperor of Austria endorsed this judgment, and added, “that he had earned immortal glory,” and he conferred on him the title of Serene Highness.
So much for the eighteenth century. If now we look back to the seventeenth, the century of the Thirty Years’ War, we find Anhalt the constant trysting-ground of the two parties, the Catholic and the Protestant Powers, and we see the princes of Anhalt again and again at the head of the Northern or Protestant armies. The Elbe often divided the two, and the bridge over the river near Dessau was contested then as it was during the Napoleonic wars. Well do I remember, when as a boy I went to the Schanzenhaus, a coffeehouse on the way to the new bridge over the Elbe, how it was explained to me that these Schanzen or fortifications were what was left of the works erected by Wallenstein: just as I learnt at a later time that my own house at Oxford called Park’s End, was so called not because it stood as it does now at the end of the Park, but because what is now called the Park was originally the Parks, i.e., the parks of artillery erected by Cromwell’s army against the walls of Oxford. The right name of my house should therefore have been not Park’s End, but Parks’ End. A more merciless war than the Thirty Years’ War was seldom waged; villages and whole towns vanished from the ground, and many tracts of cultivated land, particularly along the Elbe, were changed into deserts. Yet during all that time the Anhalt princes never wavered. When the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick II., had been proclaimed King in Bohemia in 1619, his commander-in-chief was Prince Christian of Anhalt. When after years of slaughter Gustavus Adolphus came to the assistance of the Protestant Powers in Germany and won the decisive battle of Lützen, one of Prince Christian’s sons, Prince Ernest, fought at his side and died of his wounds soon after the battle. The memory of Gustavus Adolphus has been kept alive in Dessau to the present day. He has become the hero of popular romance, and as a schoolboy I heard several stories told by the common people of his adventures during the war. There stands a large red brick house which I often passed on my way from Dessau to Wörlitz, and which is simply called Gustavus Adolphus. The story goes that the Swedish king was in hiding there under a bridge while the enemy’s cavalry passed over it.
One more century back brings us to the time of the Reformation, and once more among the most prominent champions of the Protestant cause we see the princes of Anhalt. The very cradle of the Reformation, Wittenberg, was not far from Dessau, and the reigning family of Anhalt was closely connected by marriage with the Saxon princes of the house of Wettin, the chief protectors of the reforming movement in Germany. Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt was present at the Diet of Worms, in 1521, and again in 1529, at the Diet of Speier. He openly declared in favour of ecclesiastical reform, and he extended his patronage to Luther when he came to preach at Zerbst. This was at that time a most dangerous step to take, but the young prince was not to be frightened by Pope or Emperor, and at the Diet of Augsburg he was again one of the first princes to sign the Augsburg Confession. During the momentous years that followed, the Anhalt princes were willing, as they declared, to risk life and wealth, land and throne, for the Gospel. Nor was this a mere phrase, for Prince Wolfgang, when he found himself surrounded at Bernburg by the Imperial army, chiefly Spanish, had in good earnest to fly for his life and remain in hiding for some time. When he was able to return to his duchy, he devoted his remaining years to repairing, as much as possible, the ravages of the war, and he then retired into private life of his own free will, leaving the government to his three cousins, and ending his days as a simple citizen in the small town of Zerbst. Let me quote once more the judgment passed on him by the most eminent of his own contemporaries. Luther and Philip Melanchthon have spoken in no uncertain tone of the merits of the Anhalt princes during the most critical period of the Reformation. Of Prince Wolfgang Melanchthon said: “No one will come again, equal to him in authority among princes, in love towards churches and schools, in zeal to maintain peace and concord, and in readiness to give up his life for his faith.” Of Prince George, called the Gottselige, Luther is reported to have declared: “He is more pious than I am, and if he does not get into heaven, I too shall certainly have to remain outside.” Nay, even his antagonist, the Emperor Charles V., confessed that he knew no other person in the whole of his empire who could be compared in piety or ability to Prince George of Anhalt. Who knows of him now outside the limits of the Duchy of Dessau? but it is all the more the duty of his descendants to keep his memory fresh as one of that small band of men who have done their duty.
So much for the princes of the house of Anhalt during the period of the Reformation. No other reigning family could produce a brighter escutcheon during the troubles of the sixteenth century, and we saw how that escutcheon was preserved bright and brilliant during the centuries that followed, the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth. If the title of Grand Duke does not depend on the number of square miles, surely no family has deserved that title so well as the ducal family of Anhalt.
Beyond the sixteenth century, the history of Germany tells us little of the private character of the Anhalt princes, but we may look forward to new information which the Ducal Archives will yield if examined, as they have been of late by competent historians. Much useful work has been done during the last twenty-two years by a historical society established at Dessau. A Codex Anhaltinus has been published and much light has been thrown on transactions in which some princes of Anhalt had taken a prominent part. If during the time of the Crusades the names of the Ascanians are but seldom mentioned, there was a good reason for it. Bernhard of Clairvaux himself, wise man as he was with all his fanaticism, had persuaded them to turn their arms against the heathen on the eastern borders of Germany, rather than against the heathen who had conquered the Holy Land. Slavonic tribes, particularly the Wends and Sorbs, who were still heathen, were constantly threatening the eastern parts of the German Empire, the very ramparts of civilisation and Christianity, and it was felt to be absolutely necessary to drive them back, or to induce them to adopt a civilised and Christian mode of life. In 1134 Albrecht, commonly called Albrecht the Bear, had been invested by the Emperor Lothar with the Northern Mark, or the Mark Brandenburg, as his fief, in order to defend it as best he could against these Slavonic inroads. This Albrecht the Bear is the ancestor of the reigning Dukes of Anhalt, the present duke being his nineteenth successor. It was the same Mark Brandenburg which was afterwards to become the cradle of Prussia and indirectly of the German Empire. Albrecht’s influence was so great at the time that, after the death of the Emperor Lothar, he succeeded in carrying the election of the Emperor Konrad III., the Hohenstaufen, against the Welfic party, who wished to raise the Duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, to the Imperial throne of Germany. The Emperor rewarded Albrecht’s services by taking the Duchy of Saxony away from the Welfic Duke of Bavaria, and bestowing it on him. This led to a bloody war between the two claimants, and ended in the defeat of Albrecht. But though deprived again of his Saxon fief, Albrecht proved so successful in his own mark against the Sorbs and Wends that he received the title of Markgrave of Brandenburg, and as such became one of the Electors of the German Empire. All those fierce fights against the Slavonic races on the western frontier of Germany are now well-nigh forgotten, and only the names of towns and rivers remain to remind us how much of what is now German soil, between the Elbe and Oder, had for a long time been occupied by Slavonic tribes, uncivilised and pagan. Albrecht had really inherited this task of subduing and expelling these enemies from German soil from his father, Count Otto, who was the grandson of Count Esiko of Ballenstädt (1050). All these princes and their knights had to spend their lives in settling and defending the frontiers or marks of Germany, or of what had been German soil before the southward migrations of the German tribes began. They held their fiefs from the German Emperors, but were left free to do whatever they deemed necessary in the defence of their strongholds (burgs) and settlements. The first of the Saxon Emperors, Henry I. (919–936), was called the Burgenbauer, because he encouraged all over Germany the building of strongholds which afterwards grew into villages and towns, and thus led gradually to a more civilised life in the German Empire. Wherever it was possible churches were built, bishoprics were founded, monasteries and schools established and supported by liberal grants of land. A great share in this Eastern conquest fell to the Counts of Anhalt, and their achievements were richly rewarded by the great Saxon Emperors, Henry I. and Otto the Great. There can be no doubt that these bloody crusades of the German Markgraves against their pagan enemies in the East of Europe, though less famous, left more lasting and more substantial benefits to Germany than all the crusades against the Saracens.
I shall carry my historical retrospect no farther, but it may easily be imagined how this long and glorious history of the princes of the house of Anhalt made a deep impression on the minds of the young generation, and how even as boys we felt proud of our Duke. Though the belief in heredity was not then so strong as it is now—and I must confess that even now my own belief in acquired excellencies being inherited is very small—yet standing before our Ascanian[[15]] Duke, the descendant and representative of so many glorious ancestors, one felt something like the awe which one feels when looking at an oak that has weathered many a storm, and still sends forth every year its rich green foliage. It was a just pride that made even the schoolboys lift their caps before their stately Duke and his noble Duchess, and I must confess that something of that feeling has remained with me for life, and the title of Serene Highness, which has since been changed to Royal Highness (Hoheit), has always sounded to my ears not as an empty title or as inferior to Royal Highness or even Majesty, but as the highest that could be bestowed on any sovereign, if he had deserved it by high ideals, and by true serenity of mind in the storms and battles of life.
As to myself, if as a boy I was not quite so much overawed by the inhabitants of the old stately palace at Dessau as my friends and schoolfellows, it was due perhaps to their personal kindness to our family, and likewise to a strange event that happened while I was still very young. The reigning Duke had three brothers and only one son, and in the absence of male heirs it was supposed that the duchy would have gone to Prussia. One of his brothers had married a Countess von Reina, and their children therefore could not succeed. The other brother was married to a Hessian princess, and they had no sons. But for that, they would possibly have succeeded to the throne of Denmark, as it was only due to the resignation of the elder in favour of her younger sister that this younger sister, the mother of the Princess of Wales, became Queen of Denmark, and her husband King. Both the ducal family and the whole country were anxious, therefore, that the only remaining brother of the Duke should marry and have children, when suddenly he announced to the world that he had fallen in love with a young lady at Dessau, a cousin of mine, and that no power on earth should prevent him from marrying her. There was a considerable flutter in the dovecotes of the Dessau nobility; there was also a very just feeling of regret among the people, who disliked the idea of a possible amalgamation with Prussia. Everything that could be thought of was done to prevent the marriage, but after waiting for several years the marriage was celebrated, and my cousin, as Baronne von Stolzenberg, became the Prince’s (morganatic) wife, and sister-in-law of the reigning Duke. The Prince was a handsome man, and extremely good-natured and kind, there was not an atom of pride in him. They lived very happily together, and after a few years they were received most cordially even by the old Duke and his relations. In this way the doings and sayings of the Duke and the ducal court became less hidden behind the mysterious veil that formerly shrouded Olympus, and one began to see that its inhabitants were not so very different after all from other human beings, but that they acted up to their sense of duty, did a great deal of good work unknown to the world at large, and were certainly in many respects far more cultivated and far more attractive than those who were inclined to sneer at the small German courts, and to agitate for their suppression.
What would Germany have been without her small courts? Without a Duke Charles Augustus of Weimar, there would probably have been no Wieland, no Herder, no Goethe, and no Schiller. It is not only plants that want sunshine, genius also requires light and warmth to bring it out, and the refining influence of a small court was nowhere so necessary as during the period of storm and stress in Germany. It cannot be denied that some of these small courts were hotbeds of corruption of every kind. I remember how in my younger days the small Duchy of Anhalt-Cöthen, for instance, suffered extremely from maladministration during the reign of the last Duke, who died without heirs, and had no scruples in impoverishing the country, and suppressing all opposition, however legitimate. He was a sovereign by divine rights, as much as the King of Prussia, and with the assistance of his ministers he could alienate and sell whatever he liked. He actually established a public gambling house on the railway station at Cöthen. In the third Duchy of Anhalt, that of Anhalt-Bernburg, the reigning Duke was for a time almost out of his mind, but no one had the power to restrain or to remove him. The ministers did all they could to prevent any public scandal, but it was not easy to prevent, if not a revolution—that would have been difficult on so small a scale—at least a complaint to the German Diet, and that might have become serious. Many were the stories told of the poor Duke and believed by the people. Like all court stories they went on growing and growing, and they were repeated “on the highest authority.” One day, it was said, the Duke of Bernburg had been reading the history of Napoleon, how he had decorated a sentinel, and made him an officer on the field of battle. The Duke, so we are told, carried away by his enthusiasm, rushed out of his room, embraced the sentinel, fastened some medal on his breast and said: “Thou art a captain.” The soldier, not losing his presence of mind, said to the Duke: “I thank your Serene Highness, but would you please give it me in writing?” The Duke did, and nothing remained for his ministers but to grant to the private the title and the pension of a captain, and to let him wear the small medal which the Duke had given him. I confess I could never come face to face with the fortunate captain or find out his whereabouts. Still to doubt the truth of the story would have been considered the extreme of historical scepticism. Another time the Duke’s enthusiasm was fired by reading an account of a wild-boar hunt in the neighbouring duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, which had been attended by a number of princes from all parts of Germany. He summoned his Prime Minister and told him, “I must have wild boars in my forests. Turn out a herd of pigs, they will do quite as well.” This command too had to be obeyed, and the extraordinary part of it was that in a few years these tame pigs had completely reverted to their wild state, probably not without some intermarriages with neighbouring wild boars, and the Duke of Bernburg could invite the Duke of Dessau and other princes to hunt wild boars in the Hartz mountains, as well as in the forest of Dessau. Again I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, but I have been assured by competent authorities that such a return from the tame to the savage state is by no means incredible. Very soon after this exploit, however, the ducal race of Bernburg became extinct, and the three duchies now form a happy union under the old name of Duchy of Anhalt.